34 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



the rudiments of soul, and man must be governed by faith and 

 religion that " seeing he may believe " what he cannot under- 

 stand or know till the further advance of science discovers the 

 truths of Revelation. Hence through the Epoch of Hope we 

 now follow Evolution as it develops in the mind of man the 

 quality of Imagination, and in woman that of Comprehension, 

 which two make the rudiments of the Human Soul. Thus we 

 find that the Epoch of Hope is devoted to evolving the quali- 

 ties of God the Mother, Patience, Love and Sympathy, by 

 which qualities she is with the help of Christ and his prede- 

 cessors to make more plastic the savage, stony hearts and 

 minds of men, until, when he finally evolves a soul, he will 

 be able to repay woman that debt, with interest added, he owes 

 her for the wealth of patience, love and suffering which she 

 has poured out for his redemption ; for the female qualities of 

 God can only come to man through woman. This was brought 

 about by their having to work out their existence in fear and 

 trembling, for, being physically less fitted at the start to main- 

 tain the fight for existence, and also being a later evolution of 

 the mammal creation, man had to exert higher faculties of 

 mind and courage and cruelty, and woman of love, patience, 

 and sympathy and fear to overcome their competitors in the 

 struggle for existence. 



Here, again, as in all Nature, extremes meet ; so the courage 

 of man and the fear of woman are to be the principal impetuses 

 and forces that are in the future to create man's superior 

 energy and woman's perfection in love and self-sacrifice, and 

 the timidity of his spouse is to lay the foundation of man's 

 greater constancy and chivalry to his female partner in the 

 struggle for life, she who is with God's assistance to redeem the 

 savage cruelty that has made him a greater brute and beast 

 than any other animal in creation, for, as will be seen when we 

 come to the chapter on the Evolution of Religions, it was the 

 fear of the forces of Nature that gave rise to the superstitious 

 dread that first induced man to pray. This is why Religion 

 is for ever prone to become corrupted by superstition, till in 

 the course of time its truths are obscured or lost in its mists, 

 and will be so lost till in the future Epoch of Charity, which 

 commences about the year 1800 A.D., when the Soul of God 

 the Holy Ghost shall descend into the soul of man, and evolve 

 the power of his Understanding, of the truths of divine reve- 



